


always coming home (to you)

by burglebezzlement



Category: Imposters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Con Artists, Found Family, Gen, Incidental drug and alcohol use, Swearing, Various background crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-14 11:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14768516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Maddie keeps on leaving. The team keeps drawing her back.Or: An alternate version of S2, in which Maddie decides to solve the problem of the Doctor, and finds herself running into Richard, Ezra, and Jules along the way.





	always coming home (to you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elegantstupidity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/gifts).



> Happy Fandom 5K!
> 
> This fic goes canon-divergent at the end of S1, and can be read without having seen S2. A couple potential spoilers for S2 do show up, involving Jules' family and Sally.

Maddie’s walking down the street in Columbus when she sees a woman with long, dark hair take a fall in front of a car.

She’s got her own agenda, her master plan, but she runs down the sidewalk towards the car anyway. Maybe because the woman looked so much like Jules. The hair, the walk — and then Maddie rounds the car and the woman’s getting up, and holy shit. It is Jules.

“My _arm_ ,” Jules says, grimacing as she tries moving it. “Shit. Why weren’t you looking?”

“I was looking,” the driver says defensively, getting out of the car. Maddie looks — late model, shiny-new, but with a few minor dents that say the driver doesn’t look, doesn’t take care.

Jules tries to move her arm. Winces and lets out a moan. Maddie can tell it’s fake — the arm moves a little further this time before Jules “notices” the pain — but she admires the technique. 

“My phone!” Jules leans forward and reaches for it with her other arm, and then gets up like it’s painful, displaying the spider-cracked screen. “You broke my fucking phone! I need this for work.” Her voice is uneven, the edge of tears threatening but not quite there, not quite at the point where the mark can dismiss her as hysterical and leave.

“You came out of nowhere,” the mark insists. He’s edging back towards his car. Maddie wonders what he’s already got on his driving record. Driving drunk? Hit and run?

Maddie takes mental inventory of herself — hair back, cute dress, black pumps. Not how she’d normally play this one, but it could work. She’s been playing an ingenue type this week, working her way into a public records office, but she can pull this off. Shoulders back, Midwest accent, unconscious authority — and go.

“Are you okay?” Maddie asks. “I saw everything.”

Jules looks at her and freezes, just for a moment, before flashing a tiny grin, barely visible. “Oh my god, thank you. He just came out of nowhere.”

“She came out of nowhere!” the mark insists. Maddie ignores him and goes to help Jules. 

“We should call the police,” Maddie says. “I’ve got a deposition this afternoon, but I’ll call the office, tell them to reschedule.”

The mark’s eyes go wide. Whatever he does, he’s enough of a rich asshole to recognize lawyer sign when it’s in the air. “No,” he says. “No, we can take care of this. I insist.”

Between the two of them, they take the mark for everything he has in cash, two grand, mostly in hundreds, plus a cracked Rolex studded with tiny diamonds. It’s not awkward until the mark drives off, looking in his rearview mirror like the two of them are about to unleash the hounds of hell.

“So,” Maddie says. She lets herself slump, a little, once the mark is out of sight. Her clothes haven’t been up to their usual standard lately, and the shoes pinch. “How’ve you been? You look good.”

Jules watches her for a moment, wary, and then relaxes and laughs. “That was awesome. I always forget.”

“Working with me?”

“Working with anyone.” Jules waves her hand. “Thanks.”

“I could have blown that for you,” Maddie says. She probably should have, except she’s got as much to lose as Jules if the cops show up.

“Yeah.” Jules shrugs and counts off half the money. “Here.”

Maddie takes it — she doesn’t need it, she’s got money caches spread from here to San Diego, but another grand in her bankroll doesn’t hurt. “Thanks. I don’t get half the Rolex?”

“You know Richie’s going to want that.” Jules scrunches her nose. “So nouveau riche.”

They’re alone on the sidewalk now, awkward, Jules’ hands in her pockets, Maddie uncertain of what happens next.

“You looked good,” Maddie says, and this time she means the fall. “For a minute you had me convinced he really hit you.”

“Learned from the best.” Jules says it dryly.

It takes Maddie a moment to remember. The weekend with Jules’ parents at Langmore Cabin, when they broke into her father’s liquor cabinet and got trashed on his single malt. She had to explain how she could crack the lock on the cabinet. (Like it was hard. The man was protecting a hundred grand worth of single malt with a lock one step up from the lock on a child’s toy diary. He deserved to have his Glendullan Centenary 16 watered down with iced tea.)

The lock picking led into explaining a few other cons that seemed consistent with CeeCee’s backstory. Five drinks of really excellent Scotch in, it somehow made sense to explain a few of the baby cons she’d pulled, before hooking up with Max and Sally. It was consistent with her character, and anyway, she’d sold it. Jules hadn’t suspected a thing. 

Maybe Max was right. Maybe Maddie did enjoy dancing too close to the edge. 

“Well.” Maddie has an appointment with a maybe-compromised registrar to get to. “Good seeing you, Jules.”

One side of Jules’ mouth quirks up. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

* * *

Spend enough time inhabiting someone’s fake identities, and you start noticing patterns. Maddie’s spent more than enough time in the Doctor’s to start noticing his.

She’s had to learn a lot of backstories, and she’s noticed a few things. Like how their birthplaces cluster. She and Sally and Max have all been born in Columbus, Ohio. Not every time — there’s a few other places Maddie figures might be of interest, and there’s got to be an international connection, given Ava and a few other identities they’ve been handed. But Columbus is a place to start.

Her hunch pays off. The registrar is stupid enough to accept a bribe, which gives Maddie new names for herself and a money trail to follow.

* * *

She follows the money to Atlanta, and another one of the Doctor’s washers, a woman named Patricia Peticelli who works in a specialty insurance firm, buying and selling policies and settlements.

Petticelli lives in a classy residential neighborhood — not Buckhead, but not far off. Maddie’s posing as a jogger, hair back under a cap, aviator sunglasses, baggy sweats. The mark might see her, but odds are she won’t make her when she shows up in another identity once she’s figured out her play. 

She’s running down the residential street, trying not to stand out, when she sees someone waiting in a black SUV a few doors down.

 _Feds_ , she thinks. If the FBI are already on to Peticelli, things just got more complicated.

Long practice keeps her from showing her worry as she jogs by the SUV, looking into the rear-view mirror, and seeing — Richard?

Richard. It’s definitely Richard.

Maddie slows to a walk a few doors down and starts stretching her arms out as she walks back to the SUV. 

“Thanks for picking me up, sweetie,” she says, popping the door open. She gets into the SUV and leans over to kiss him on the cheek. “How was your day?”

Richard’s got enough of the Boy Scout left in him to startle. “What — what are you —”

“Start driving,” Maddie says. She rolls up the window. “We’ve got some stuff to talk about. Like what the hell you’re doing in the middle of my con.”

“Your con?” Richard’s leaning in, his body language making it clear they’re fighting. He’s drawing attention. “We’ve been here for three weeks, working on this, and you think you can just swoop in and —”

Maddie puts her hand on his forearm, keeping it light for anyone who might be watching, and digs into his tendons with her fingers. “We’re just a normal, happy couple, Richie,” she says, a smile on her face. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

It takes a few blocks to convince him, but Richard drives her to a downtown building. Big, anonymous. He’s got a pass to get them into the garage, and Maddie tenses when he gets out of the car, but whatever’s going on here, he’s not going to call security.

He’s got too much to lose.

The apartment looks like a corporate rental. Tasteful furniture, like an overgrown hotel suite, the air dry and air-conditioned. Jules and Ezra are slumped back on the rug, passing a joint back and forth and giggling.

“Nice,” Richard says. “I’m out working, and you two are getting high.”

“Chill out.” Jules coughs and then looks over, and then she’s scrambling to her feet. “What — what?”

“Chill out,” Maddie says, echoing Jules’ words back to her. Maddie’s still in her suburban jogger camo, but she shifts her weight, standing tall. “What are you idiots doing here?”

Ezra’s eyes slide past her, out to the skyline behind the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Seeing the Big Peach?”

Nobody calls it that. Maddie’s been here before — spent six months romancing and marrying a producer, a real piece of work, before blowing town with two million dollars. ($1.4 million to the Doctor. $600,00 split between Maddie, Max, and Sally. Maddie should have left the Doctor sooner.)

“Cut the crap.” Maddie leans back against the wall. “What’s the play?”

“Blessing job,” Ezra says, proudly, and then he’s sharing the whole plan. Apparently Peticelli got tired of her cut of the Doctor’s laundry and decided to move on to her own scam. She’s been running a fraudulent charity for two years, one that Richard and Ezra and Jules somehow sniffed out.

“A blessing job?” Maddie asks. “Are you shitting me?” Convincing someone to put all their valuables into a bag before swapping it for an identical bag full of newspaper and rocks — of all the stupid jobs to try pulling on a known con artist.

“It’s working,” Richard says, earnestly. “She’s convinced she’s having bad luck. And we’re not running a bag swap. Jules told her she has to bury the money under an oak tree at midnight on the full moon. We wait for her to bury the money, and then — bam.”

“Cut me in,” Maddie says. 

“What?” Ezra looks up. “No. This is our con. Go find your own con.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Richard says, and Maddie can just tell he thinks he’s being sneaky. Richard is the worst at sneaky. “We’ll cut you in for an even share of what we’re getting paid.”

The way he phrased that… “You idiots are handing her over to the cops, aren’t you.”

“She broke the Code,” Richard says, like that’s supposed to mean something. “It was a fake children’s cancer charity. That means she’s stealing from sick people. From kids. From sad people.” He’s ticking them off on his fingers. He thinks for a moment, and ticks another finger. “Babies, probably.”

“We don’t need the money,” Ezra says, and then he grins. “We were in St. Louis last month. I sold the Gateway Arch to three different sets of Japanese tourists.”

Sold the Gateway Arch — Ezra really is working from the Conman’s Playbook, 1973 Edition. Maddie sighs. “So this charity was never registered?”

“All part of the con,” Jules says.

“If you turn the money in to the cops, they’re just going to keep it,” Maddie says. “Confiscated funds.”

“Wait.” Jules sits up. “Really?”

“Really.” Maddie lets herself slump down the wall to the floor, joining the rest of them. The wheels in her mind turn furiously. She’s been looking for an angle with Peticelli, a way in. Her only plan so far involves an orange-red wig and hoping Peticelli knows enough to be afraid of Lenny Cohen, but hasn’t actually met her before. 

If Peticelli takes the charity money and runs, Maddie won’t get anywhere. But if Richard and Ezra and Jiles give the money to the charity directly, cut out the cops, and Maddie can convince Peticelli that the Doctor is the one who conned her — can convince her Maddie’s here to help her get revenge —

“Go ahead and run your con,” Maddie says. “Give the money to a charity. A real one this time. And then get out of town.”

They work out the details over Jules’ and Ezra’s takeout order, sitting together around the rental table like the four of them have something real. Maddie catches their reflection in a window and bites her lip. It’s like a furniture catalog cover — Four Friends Catch Up.

Maddie can’t step into that picture. She arranges the terms of a dead drop so they can tell her when the job’s done, and takes off, her plate of moo shu pork left uneaten. All the way down the stairwell, she ignores the tiny part of herself that wants to stay. Wants to see how things turn out.

 _Always forward_ , she reminds herself, as she uses her burner cell and one of her fake identities to order an Uber for an address three blocks away. _Never backward._

* * *

Once the scam’s played out, it’s easy for Maddie to show up and tell Peticelli she’s a fellow victim, tell her the Doctor was the one who hit her. Maddie doesn’t even have to take the wheel. Instead, she lets Peticelli talk her into an elaborate revenge scheme — a scheme that just happens to let Maddie into her records.

The Doctor discourages records, but Maddie kept them anyway, in a Dropbox account, and Peticelli’s no different. Except where Maddie just has a list of identities and marks, Peticelli has all the records for a significant chunk of the Doctor’s washing business. It’s a motherlode — Maddie just went into this looking to get herself some leverage, but Peticelli’s records might be enough for someone like Patrick to follow the money. Take the Doctor down.

 _Why not?_ Maddie asks herself, as she walks back to the cafe table where she and Peticelli are staking out “the Doctor” for the day. She taps Peticelli on the shoulder and switches their burners back with her other hand.

She looks up Patrick’s email that night, and sets up a deadman’s switch. If the Doctor takes Maddie out, the email will send three days after she hasn’t logged into the account. Thanks to Peticelli, what she has might be enough to bring him down.

* * *

The money trail goes off in too many different directions, so Maddie just chooses one and flies to Minneapolis to start following. It’s cold there, bitter-cold, and she drops some of her cash on a new wardrobe with a warm, full-length wool coat. She’s always hated jobs up north.

Boston, Salt Lake City, Chicago. Savannah, Georgia. Maddie runs through all the active teams, looking for someone to get sloppy. For someone to leave a trail.

She gets her big break in Palm Springs, of all places, where one of the Doctor’s operatives, a woman who identifies new recruits and runs communications, lives outside of town, in a house protected by obscurity, a large dog, and a fairly sophisticated security system. Maddie stakes the place out for days, watching through cameras, until she learns the woman’s routine and figures out a route in, over the roof from the neighbor’s porch and then in through the attic vent. 

She brings a steak for the dog. Maybe she was unfair to Ezra. There’s something to be said for the classics.

* * *

She starts visiting teams for real. The information she’s got by now lets her find them, and she knows enough of how the Doctor operates to pretend she’s running security checks. 

This team’s running a real estate investment scam. Three guys — one about Max’s age, two younger. They’re in the game right now, and normally they wouldn’t get together until the job is over. Maddie showing up with a gun and their real names gave them a reason to make an exception. 

They’re at an apartment one of the guys is staying in — short-term rental, fourteenth floor. There’s an ocean view from the bathroom, if you crane your neck just right. 

“Things went sideways in Seattle,” she tells them. “The Feds decided to run an undercover op. The team barely escaped. We’re tightening security across the board.”

She sees the look they give one another when she blames the local team for the mess. 

“Why would the Doctor’s operatives go after a fucking Fed?” one of them asks. “I thought the Doctor was supposed to clear all of our marks.”

“Only reason to give him sixty percent,” the older guy mutters, like he’s been resenting this for a while. Maddie smiles inside. She always figured Max didn’t get them the best deal.

“Whether the Doctor did or did not clear a Fed as a mark isn’t relevant here, gentlemen,” she says, trusting that they’ll connect the dots. Either the Doctor fucked up, or he hung his team out to dry.

One more team thinking about burning themselves.

* * *

She tries not to think about Ezra and Jules and Richard.

Maddie used to think about who her exes would become, once she was gone. She’s always told herself they’d be better off without her — who’d be better off with Maddie still around?

Without CeeCee, Jules could rip off the bandaid, get back to her art for real, channel her pain into a masterpiece. Without Ava, Ezra would realize how great his life actually was — loving family, great job. Gabby right there, her love for Ezra obvious to everyone but Ezra himself. Richard, growing up and realizing that he doesn’t need Alice or anyone else to tell him he can go after his dreams.

It didn’t work out like that. Sometimes Maddie finds herself wondering why.

* * *

She’s in Fort Lauderdale when one of the teams she’s looking into lets slip that there’s a new enforcer, a blonde woman with a scarred face. Maddie doesn’t dare hope, not at first — not until she’s in Dallas and gets a name. 

“They already sent Sal,” the con artist she’s interviewing says, face twisting with fear. “Why are they sending you, too?”

Maddie lives for the tricky bits, for the moments when she’s dancing on a live volcano, one step away from disaster, and she gets the rest of the information — who Sal is, how they contact her — out of him. 

She sets a meet for a local mall, outside the security desk, where she hopes Sally can’t pull a gun. She plans out three exit routes, and then remembers that Sally and Max were the ones who taught her that, and finds a fourth. (Loading dock door down the maintenance hall from the Victoria’s Secret. Maddie lays the groundwork, telling a sympathetic clerk about her abusive ex, preparing the way. Just in case.)

When Sally shows, she’s in a standard Dallas housewife outfit — cropped jean leggings under a long swingy top covered with an open jacket, just structured enough to hide a gun. Scarf around her neck, hiding some of her scars. 

“Maddie.” Her voice is different, and Maddie’s not sure if it’s something Sally’s putting on. She always was the best of them at accents.

“I wanted to warn you,” Maddie said. “For old times’ sake.”

“Yeah?” The corner of Sally’s mouth turns up, against the scarring on her face. It looks painful.

Maddie looks away, towards the mannequins in a window, their heads missing, so shoppers can project whatever they want onto them. 

“I missed you,” she says, looking back at Sal, and she wonders if it’s true.

“It’s the game,” Sally says, but her face softens a little. “What happened to Maxie?”

“Last time I saw him, I’d just left him with a briefcase full of newspaper.”

Sally smiles.

They start walking the mall, blending in with the crowd. Just another anonymous mother and daughter shopping. They pass between a Cinnabon and a popcorn stand, the air filled with warring cinnamon and artificial butter flavor smells.

“I won’t forget what you did,” Sally says, pretending to inspect the displays at a Pottery Barn Kids. “Giving me a head start.”

“Yeah.” Maddie keeps her face turned away as they start walking again. “What happened?” The Sally she knew could have disappeared from anywhere. 

“Not your fault I was stupid enough to trust Maxie.” This time, Sally’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I wanted to warn you,” Maddie says. “I’ve been gathering evidence on the Doctor.”

Maybe it’s a risk, trusting Sally. But if Sally grabs Maddie right here and buries her in a shallow grave in the scrubland outside of town, Patrick’s going to be getting an interesting email three days from now. Maddie’s got more than enough on the Doctor by now — so much more than enough that sometimes she wonders why she’s stalling on using it.

“I can give you a warning in return,” Sally says. “The Doctor’s going after your exes.”

Maddie stops dead in front of a stand selling magnets. “What?”

“Richard, Ezra. Jules.”

“I know their names,” Maddie says. She’s had a lot more exes than just those three, but only those three who the Doctor might be going after. “Why?”

“Something about a ring Maxie promised him that failed to appear as scheduled,” Sally says. “He thinks they might have it.”

“No way.” Maddie shakes her head. “There’s no way they….” Unless Richard remembered the code to Patrick’s house, and they ripped off the ring before the wedding, but there’s no way — and then she remembers that the three of them never had a reason to trust her. 

Maybe they did take the ring. She looks at her reflection in a store window and tries to ignore the way her fingers buzz. The way her head feels, light, disconnected.

“Where are they?” she asks.

“That’s all I know,” Sally says, and she turns to leave, melting through the employee access door with a stolen code before Maddie can try to follow.

* * *

When Maddie’s trying to avoid them, she stumbles across her exes on random street corners. Now, when she needs to find them —

Social media: all dead. Most people can’t manage that, but from all outward appearances, Jules, Ezra, and Richard have slipped off the internet’s radar entirely. _They do have each other_ , Maddie thinks, grimly. She tries to remember what Richard’s password on Flickr was, the one he used to post obnoxious, arty photos of new cars. She can’t, and the account’s been deleted anyway.

She calls the Blooms, Ezra’s family, but none of them have heard from him, or if they are, they aren’t telling her. Ezra’s mom hangs up on her before she gets a chance to explain that Ezra might be in danger.

Richard’s old coach. Jules’ old art teacher. Nothing. 

She even pretends to be a class reunion organizer for Jules’ art school and calls Poppy, Jules’ terrible sister. Poppy sniffs. “Our little Jules is out finding herself,” she chirps, in that voice Maddie used to enjoy, before she decided to base Alice on Poppy and got stuck spending six months talking like that. “On an adventure! I wouldn’t tell you if I knew, which I don’t. So like Jules, don’t you agree? So independent.” She says it like she thinks it’s terrible, but expects Maddie will think it’s a good thing. 

Maddie’s at the bottom of the barrel, looking through scam reporting websites, trying to find someone the team might have ripped off recently, something, anything, that might give her a lead, when she remembers the old Instagram account Ezra started.

She hasn’t thought of it in ages. It was only ever private, “just for the two of us,” Ezra had said, leaning in with that puppy-dog expression in his eyes. 

When she logs in, the account’s profile photo has been changed. Gone is the photograph of the two of them, looking into one another’s eyes under the changing leaves of a tree at the park. (Engagement photo shoot. For a rushed wedding, Ezra really had managed to fit in all the cliches.) Instead, the profile photo shows a ring with an enormous citrine-yellow stone, perched on a small clump of crocuses.

It takes Maddie a moment. Crocus — Saffron. Of course.

So they did take the ring. 

She flicks through the photos, looking for any clue of where they are. The recent photos are fragmentary. Shots of a beach, of ocean water, unmoored, without any view of the land for context. Food shots — barbecue, steak, a diner table with eggs and toast. No napkins with names. 

She keeps scrolling, and finds a shot with fractured lights distorting what might be the side of a taco truck. There’s a drawing of a phoenix, rising up out of a taco. Maybe a logo? Maybe Los Angeles. The ocean, the food — if it’s not Los Angeles, at least it’s on the right side of the country. 

It’s not much. It’s something. Maddie throws everything into her bag and calls the airline, starts booking tickets to LA for one of her aliases before she realizes that might be what the Doctor’s expecting. The Sally she knew wouldn’t do that, but….

She books tickets to Florida instead. She can check in, get through security, and then double-back through and get a rental car to drive. 

She’ll figure out the rest of it on the way.

* * *

The hotel’s in downtown LA, bar area filled with mirrors for the beautiful people to look at themselves. Ezra looks natural, comfortable, like he was made to wear tight jeans and a turtleneck and a scruffy half-beard.

Maddie takes a sip of her $26 cocktail, house specialty bitters and small-batch bourbon, and drifts closer to Ezra’s table. He’s definitely with a mark.

“The sharing economy is too focused on the personal space,” Ezra says, waving his hands like he’s leading a TED talk. “Which is great if you want to solve the problems of age-regressed techtrepreneurs, but some of us want to solve real problems.”

Maddie mentally shakes her head. The mark seems to be buying it, but Ezra’s obviously in full bullshit mode. 

“We’ve got some stuff brewing that’s going to disrupt business sectors,” Ezra says, lowering his voice. “I shouldn’t say anything more.”

He lets the mark talk him into more details. The VC funding series for the next great idea, brewed up at a startup incubator — “you wouldn’t have heard of it,” Ezra says, “they don’t go looking for press like Y-Combinator” — and how he’s just filled out the next funding round.

The mark looks like a man whose golden ticket has just been taken away. “Fully committed?”

“Totally.” Ezra does a great realization face. Understated. Really sells the mark on the idea that Ezra wasn’t trying to sell him anything. “Sorry, were you — rude of me! Look, get in touch with my office — we can keep you on the list for the next funding round.”

Maddie can predict how it’s going to go down. Someone’s going to drop out of the funding round, through no fault of their own. The mark’s going to think he’s gotten the deal of a lifetime — until he goes to get his money back, and realizes that the company doesn’t even exist. Never existed.

“You didn’t even tell him the pitch,” Maddie says, once the mark’s left. 

Ezra grins. “I didn’t? Are you sure?”

Maddie just looks at him, one eyebrow raised.

“The vaguer I am about the pitch, the more convinced they are,” Ezra admits. He drains his glass and smiles. “So. Are you working the same mark again? Here to warn me off?”

“What were you going to tell him?” Maddie asks. “If he’d asked.”

“Uber for dog grooming,” Ezra says. “Or maybe Air BnB for liquor licenses. We’re still trying to come up with something stupid enough that a real startup won’t try to do it.”

Maddie feels something inside herself relax. He’s here, he’s breathing — some part of her was expecting to find all three of them in the trunk of Lenny Cohen’s car, or just gone. Missing. But here’s Ezra, alive and in the game. 

“We need to find Richie and Jules,” she says, leaving the rest of her drink on the bar. “Right now.”

* * *

The house is bank-owned, a sprawling palace looking out over the Valley, tied up in red tape and legal battles. If anyone asks, Richard and Jules and Ezra are caretakers for the bank. They’ve gotten the lights back on, the pool refilled. Jules is out in the courtyard, holding a chainsaw, staring at a stump of wood that she’s carving into a shape Maddie can’t make out. 

“Team meeting,” Ezra calls, and Maddie sees the double-take Jules gives when she sees it’s Maddie.

Richard’s at the kitchen bar, putting together a facial hairpiece — a goatee. Posing as the VC for their scam, maybe?

“What’s she doing here?” Richard asks. 

Maddie sits down in a chair. “Saving your assess.” 

Ezra pulls three beers out of the fridge and hands one to Jules as she comes in the door, smelling faintly of sawdust. “From what?” Ezra asks.

“The Doctor,” Maddie says. She intercepts the third beer before Richard can take it. Ezra passes his own beer to Richard and goes to get another for himself. “I have reliable information saying he’s on to you three. He plans to kill you.”

Jules snorts. “Again?”

“I’m sorry, did you die before?”

“I’m just saying.” Jules shrugs. “He hasn’t killed us yet. Why now?”

“You stole the ring,” Maddie says. “You blew an operation’s cover. Ezra here worked with the FBI. And have all three of you forgotten your freezer envelopes? You were supposed to stay at home, like good little exes.”

“I only worked with the FBI because you told me to!” Ezra protests.

“Doesn’t matter. Not to the Doctor.”

She expects them to ask why she cares. She doesn’t have an explanation. Not a good one. 

Maybe just not one she’s willing to admit. 

“What’s the plan?” Richard asks, instead. “We run and then what, the Doctor finds us again? Is there an endgame here?”

Maddie looks at them, sitting together on the couch across from her, like they had that morning at the diner in Seattle, when three of her pasts caught up with her. Richard’s arms folded. Jules’ brows furrowed. Ezra’s expression a little distant, like he’s planning something. 

“I have a plan,” she says. “But I need your help.”

* * *

Patrick’s sitting behind a booth at the career fair, reading a book like he doesn’t give a shit if any of the students wandering around the gym want to talk to him about an exciting career in the FBI. 

They really did bust him down, Maddie thinks, adjusting her tailored mustard shell. She’s got her Saffron uniform on — high heels, burgundy pencil skirt. Hair pulled back into a waterfall braid. 

She’s never liked this one. She doesn’t plan on being Saffron again.

“Hello,” she says to Patrick, in that Saffron voice she used for Gary Heller. That little-girl voice that she designed, once upon a time, for her first meeting with the Doctor. “I came to give you your ring back. I don't think our engagement is going to work out.”

Patrick’s frozen for a moment, and then his training kicks in, and he goes for his gun.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Maddie says. “Pull a gun in front of all these nice young potential recruits?”

“Maybe it’ll inspire them to pursue a career in law enforcement,” Patrick says, his voice rough.

Maddie shakes her head. “Check the box.”

He keeps one hand on his gun, opens the box with his other. The ring’s there, all 1.2 million dollars of saffron diamond. 

“The real gift’s underneath,” Maddie says, leaning in like she’s going to kiss him on the cheek. At the last moment, she puts her mouth to his ear. “If you still want the Doctor, check the flash drive.”

And then she turns to walk away, confident in her two-inch heels. It takes Patrick a moment to realize he needs to come after her, and that’s his mistake, because that’s when Ezra cues the Saffron parade. From all corners of the career fair, women with long, dark hair, mustard shells, and burgundy pencil skirts swarm out, walking the aisles of the fair.

Maddie ducks behind a display on financial consulting to pull off her heels and put on the dark sweater she stashed earlier. She walks out through a crowd of her former selves.

“You were right,” she says, when she meets Ezra at the door. The police pull up as they walk past, but they’re looking for Saffrons, and Maddie and Ezra walk right by. “I have always wanted to pull a Thomas Crowne Affair.”

* * *

They didn’t put everything on the flash drive. Just a taste.

The taste is enough. Patrick reaches out, sends an email to the throwaway address Jules established for them. 

Jules is the one who insists on getting a lawyer involved. She has one already, it turns out — when they walk into her office, Maddie’s palms sweating, the lawyer just smiles. “You must be Jules’ cousin’s ex wife.”

Maddie laughs, the fake laugh she uses when a con’s gone wrong. “Something like that.”

The lawyer walks them through the deal, one step at a time. Maddie’s between Ezra and Jules, and she doesn’t realize how tense she is until Jules reaches out and bumps her on the upper arm.

“Hey,” she says. “This is a good thing.” 

Maddie nods.

“It’s an exceptional deal,” the lawyer says, like she’s correcting Jules on a point of law. Maybe she’s right. In exchange for Maddie’s information on the Doctor and his network, the four of them are getting full immunity for any past wrong-doing. 

“Do we have to stay in Witsec?” Maddie asks, because that’s been bothering her all along. She knows the Doctor’s reach, knows he probably has a few Federal Marshals on the payroll. If the FBI moves too slow, doesn’t take everything apart at once —

“You don’t have to stay in Witsec, but you may need to be available to testify,” the lawyer says. Maddie’s heart sinks because that was exactly what she was hoping to avoid. 

It’s why she got the documents, why she developed the entire money trail. Because only someone from the inside could, sure. Because maybe she’s naive enough to believe in things like get out of jail free cards. But mostly because she wants the Doctor taken down, and she wants herself far, far away while that happens.

Ezra leans across Richard to look at Maddie, his expression earnest, for once. “It’ll be OK.”

“The Marshal Service has a remarkable track record,” the lawyer says, like she’s agreeing with Ezra, but the way Ezra’s mouth twitches says he’s already thinking of ways for them to disappear.

* * *

They sign the papers at a Denny’s out by SeaTac, in front of their lawyer and a couple suits from the Department of Justice. Maddie’s the one who insisted on it. She wasn’t willing to risk going into a Federal building.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” their lawyer says, when every paper has been signed, and everyone’s ready to walk away. Maddie’s back sags. All their evidence is already with the lawyer’s office, and they’ll turn everything over to the Feds. Even if the Doctor shows up now, even if Lenny walks through that door, the end’s already begun.

* * *

To anyone watching — a Fed, maybe, or a cleanup specialist — it looks like the four go into SeaTac and split up to go their own separate ways.

Maddie’s got a ticket to New York, bought under her own name. She checks in, clears security, and doubles back through the women’s restroom before leaving the gate area, walking back out, and jumping into the first cab she sees. 

It’s early evening when she arrives in Port Townsend. The pines on the hills leading down to the water are dark smudges, the sky the clear blue of twilight right before the stars come out.

Maddie leaves her stolen car a few blocks away, behind a drugstore, and walks up to the bus station. She lets herself hang behind the building for a few minutes.

Not hiding. Just — thinking. It’s been a long time. She’s not sure what Richard and Ezra and Jules will want of her. What being with them will make her want of herself.

Then she thinks of how she felt, looking for them, after Sally told her they were in danger, and it’s no choice at all. 

She straightens her back, playing a more confident version of herself, and walks onto the bus.

The three of them are there, sitting on the five-across seat at the very back. Jules sees her first, and her eyes light up as she nudges the other two.

“You came,” Richard says, and Ezra gets up to give her an awkward half-hug before she settles into one of the middle seats between them.

“Someone has to keep you out of trouble.” Maddie pushes her bag under her seat.

“Keep us out of trouble.” Ezra huffs. “You know you love the trouble.”

“We have rules,” Richard says, as the bus starts to make its way out of Port Townsend, towards a future Maddie can’t quite see. “If you’re going to run with this crew.” He pulls a won sheet of paper out of his pocket, one Maddie instantly recognizes as drawn by Jules.

“The Maddie Code?”

“Wrong side.” Richard flushes and flips it over, keeping a firm hold on the sheet. “First: No scamming the elderly. No kids. No nice people.”

She leans back and lets her attention drift while Richard explains the finer points of who does and doesn’t count as an asshole. The bus makes its way south, towards their destination, and Maddie realizes that it doesn’t feel like going backward.

It feels like being where she’s meant to be. Like however they found their way to one another, this was where she was supposed to be all along. 

It feels like something new.


End file.
